slowly getting better.

so. you could call me a coward, and that would be ok. round two of antibiotics, FIGHT!

yep, went to the ol family care physician for the sinus infection, because it just became too much to handle on my own. a sinus infection?! too much?! yeah, i know. it's easy for me to deal with other people's illnesses and make recommendations based on what i see/feel/hear/know, but when it comes to my own maladies, my brain seems to be AWOL.

round one was amoxicillin, it did nothing, other than cause problems. went back last week and was given cefdinir, which is what wes usually gets for sinus infections, and it's working. slowly but surely. it's not causing me any problems, so there's a high compliance rate, you could say. no secondary infections, no discomfort, no gastrointestinal distress, whereas amoxicillin makes me pretty ill. the right side of my face still has transient pain, i still have blurred vision, and i'm still pretty wiped, but i'm definitely starting to feel better. also doing nasal irrigation. i have not yet tried a recommendation for sesame oil dripped down each nostril (one of the primary factors in my constitution is overwhelming dryness.) i'm being a little bit of a sissy. funnily enough, wes also went to the doctor the same day for the same problem, but he's got totally different symptoms. i've got dryness, post nasal drip, fluid in my ears, blurred vision, and severe facial pain and headaches. he's stuffy with a ton of nasal discharge, he's got an ear infection, and then also the headache and the blurred vision. same antibiotics, same amount, etc. we've both got nasal irrigation systems so we don't cross contaminate. they took his blood for allergy testing, seeing as how he's gotten so many of them, and the doctor yelled at him to get his cat scan done. (which he's put off for approximately 6 months).

met with an herbalist who i have immense respect for last week. it was fabulous. my only regret is that my donation was much smaller than i would've liked it to have been, but hopefully i'll be getting some more commissions soon, and as such, can throw a bit more his way. he gave me some excellent recommendations for all sorts of goings on, especially the anxiety/panic attack situation. i'm happy to report i haven't had a true blue panic attack since the beginning of last week. (tuesday the 16th). oh, i've definitely had some anxiety, sometimes pretty overwhelming, but nothing like the "oh god, i'm dying, i have to go to the hospital" type of panic attack.

so, he gave me a little hunk of calamus root, as it's indicated by several different issues i've got going on, and i'm playing with that a little. nibbled some of it tuesday night, went to bed, slept like the dead, woke up feeling extremely....thankful. that was nice. nibbled on a little bit more of it last night, was out cold within 1/2 an hour at the extremely early hour of quarter to 11. did not sleep well. could not wake up last night. i was just....done. didn't feel any different when i woke up this morning. calamus root is something i'm going to spend some time working at, just sitting with, and seeing it's effects. she sounds as though she could be a really amazing plant ally for me, if she'll let me.

the problem i'm currently facing is...when. when do i sit with calamus? i, of course, am a little afraid, because if i'm going to be knocked on my rear every time i nibble on the root, i can't do so while i have anything else to do. this includes work, school, parenting, personal studying, "alone time" with wes (wherein we're usually watching cartoons or playing scrabble anyway, but it's nice to just spend quiet time together). then, of course, i'm afraid of the gastrointestinal effects of "too much" calamus. of course, you'll never see me choking down 6-8 inches of root (oh man, the erowid vault for calamus...hilarity), but hey. i'm afraid of everything. and then, of course, there's the self preservation side of having been an anxious wreck for years. what would it feel like not to have anxiety anymore? and that's a little scary too. it's almost like a self defense mechanism.

so, i figure if i nibble a little bit here and there, we'll see what happens.

i've been keeping up on my bio work given to me by my new counselor, so that's a good thing. i'm usually fairly lazy when it comes to doing something that will actually take care of me and serve me, and often hit big road blocks with that. i haven't done it every day, but nearly every day, and that's more than i would've expected out of myself.

more goings on:
got my kitchen aid mixer. with a grain mill. woo hoo! good for milling flour for bread. good for brewing beer. speaking of, i've had 1/2 a beer in the last month, so that's great. being on antibiotics helps with that too, beta-lactam antibiotics + alcohol = total misery. not just beta-lactam, but several in the cephalosporin family specifically cause a disulfram-like reaction, and i don't wanna mess around.

made a couple loaves of bread with the mixer. man, did i screw that up. that's ok, that's what experimentation is for, and that's how you get good at it.

i'm taking the second week in october off, and we'll be putting in our raised beds then, and fixing the water spigot on the front of the house that's wasting water and has turned my front flower box into a swamp. if i had some more cashola, i'd be painting the living room as well.

wes and andrew are currently off stumping around the woods, and i'm sad i couldn't go with them, but my homework is two days overdue, and i really, really need to get a jumpstart on the next module.

i'm applying (again) for a student loan, this time with a cosigner, and will hopefully be able to take care of my balance with ACHS for the current class, and also hopefully will be able to take holistic pathophysiology in november. the classes that are most important for me to take with them are going to be the pathophysiology/pathology/business classes, and those are what i'm going to aim for the most over the short term. other than that, going to keep doing stuff locally, get to know our bioregion's plants, and read as much as i possibly can. it would be awesome if i had friends with similar interests/experience levels with this stuff, or a local mentor, but hey, what can i do? there's tons of email lists and forums and such that i lurk on, so...that's something. and i get to share a lot with wes, especially about wildcrafting.

speaking of wes, he'll be ordering some supplies next commission check to start doing some homegrowing mushroom stuff. we went to the bookstore last week and i happened to see Mycelium Running, by Paul Stamets. I picked it up for him, and he complained that we really didn't have the money for it, but I told him if he didn't buy it, I'd use my gift card for amazon to order it for him. He bought it. He's torn through it. I don't think I've ever seen him read so fast. I'm so happy he's found something that interests him.

man. i'm wordy.